Letter Grade B Donald Trump claims to be the world’s greatest negotiator but he only gets a B grade for his trade deal with Japan. Under pressure to get an agreement because U.S. farmers were being hurt in the Japanese market by his earlier withdrawal from TPP, he gave Japan more concessions on industrial goods than was perhaps expected. Worse, powerful Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) concludes that U.S. farmers only obtained 90 percent of what they would have gotten had the TPP deal been kept. Look out for what is gotten in a trade deal with China if the President is under pressure during re-election due to a tepid economy. Wrong Tax Goal The Bulgarian government is contemplating waiving the value added t...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.